floristic work, Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sin- icae, with accounts of over 90 families al- ready puhlished. Volume 14 contains pet- aloid monocotyledons, and The Lilies of China is hasically a translation of the treat- ment of Lilium and its related genera Cardio- crinum, Nomocharis and Notholirion. Clearly, for lily enthusiasts and botanists, such a translation is invaluable since nearly half of the world’s species of Lilium occur in China and there is little recent information available about some of the rarer ones. The hook is however not just a straight trans- lation of the original Flora account by Miss Liang Sung-yun. It also contains chapters on distribution and hahitat, propagation and cultivation, and an interesting history of cultivation and uses in China since ancient times. The introduction includes useful information about the modern Pinyin transliterations of province names, cur- rently a source of confusion to all who are interested in Chinese plants. The author is an Oxford graduate in Chinese, has studied at the University of Shandong, is a keen horticulturist and has travelled widely in search of plants, all of which are useful qualifications for preparing such a work.

Some of the line drawings have not reproduced well and the 9 colour plates illustrate only 5 of the 37 Chinese Lilium species, so at the cost of this book one would have hoped for a better representation. However, this aside, it is a most useful addition to the literature on Lilium, filling gaps and updating the information given in the standard western works on the genus.

Brian Mathew

NOTES ON ECONOMIC BOTANY OF CHINA. Fac- simile Reprint. Augustine Henry. Introduc- tion by E.C. Nelson. xv + 68 pp. Boethius Press, Kilkenny. 1986. ISBN086314 101 3. L7.50 (paperback).

Boethius Press has followed its recent publication of a new biography of Augus- tine Henry (Sheila Pim, The Wood and the Trees, 1984) with this reprint of his Notes on Economic Botany of China, introduced by E.C. Nelson of the National Botanic Garden, Glasnevin. As stated in the introduction, Henry’s work was originally published in Shanghai as an article in a local monthly journal, The Messenger, in 1893, and was reprinted in the same year with little modifi- cation by the Presbyterian Mission Press as a separate booklet. Only 100 copies of this were produced and it is now apparently

very rare; only one copy, at the United States Department of Agriculture, Wash- ington, is known to Nelson. The present text is a reproduction of the facsimile produced hy the United States Department of Agric- ulture in 1903 under the direction of David Fairchild.

The Notes record the state of European knowledge of Chinese folk-botany in the late nineteenth century, and though not, as Nelson rightly comments, a major work of scientific endeavour, they nevertheless marked an important step forward in the development of that knowledge. The ac- curacy of Henry’s identifications has well stood the test of time. A random selection - Tusanqi (Cynura and Sedum), Dahuang (Rheum pafmatum), Tudahuang (Rwnex ob- fusiyolius), Muxiang (Saussurea lappa), Beimu (Fritillaria spp.) Caowu (Aconitum kumt- sowii), Chishao (Paeonia IacfiJora), Bajiaolian (Dyosma versipellis), Huanglian (Copfis) and Jiegeng (Plalycodon grandiJoms) - suffices to illustrate this point. Doubts he expressed about the identification of Sanqi (Panax notogimeng) and the scorn he poured on to the previous identification of Baizhi (Angelica dahurica) as orris root have sub- sequently been amply justified. A useful index by Nelson to the scientific names used by Henry completes the work.

Charles JefTrey

SHORT REVIEWS AND NOTICES

Victoria Matthews

AND EUROPE. Oleg Polunin. xix + 107 pp., 192 plates of colour photographs. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York. 1987. ISBN 0 19 217630 7. Paperback, L6.95.

A reprint of a hardback which appeared first in 1972. It deals with 1,080 plants (there are over 1 1,OOO species in Europe!) and most people will probably use the photographs as a means of identification as the text is too minimal, curious symbols notwithstanding, to be really useful.

A CONCISE GUIDE TO THE FLOWERS OF BRITAIN

FLOWERS OF GREECE AND THE BALKANS, A FIELD GUIDE. Oleg Polunin. xv + 592 pp., 82 plates of colour photographs, several pages of line drawings. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York. 1987. ISBN 0 19 281998 4. Paperback, L12.95.

Published as a hardback in 1980, this

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reprint will be welcomed by the traveller to the Balkan Peninsula, being a third of the price of the original. Well-researched, with keys ahd descriptions, it enables almost 3,000 species to be identified. The dust- jacket ofthe hardback was cheerful and eye- catching; the colour of the cover of the reprint is sadly dull and rather horrid.

THE ENGLISHMAN’S FLORA. Geoffrey Grigson. 478 pp., 44 black and white woodcuts. Phoenix House, London. 1987. ISBN 0 460 07007 X. E25.

A long-awaited and welcome facsimile reprint of the book first published in 1955, which surveys, species by species, the local vernacular names of English wild Rowers. Folklore and the relations between the plants and ourselves are treated with the scholarship for which the author was held in

high regard. This edition is enhanced by a forward by Grigson’s wife, Jane, ofculinary fame, and by an introduction by Prof. W.T. Stearn.

BEE ORCHIDS. Stephen Blackmore. ISBN 0 85263 745 4. BUTTERCUPS. Stephen Blackmore. ISBN 0 85263 763 2. WILLOWS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. Theresa Brendall. ISBN 0 85263 765 9. All 24 pp., illustrated in colour and black and white. Shire Publications Ltd., Princes Risborough. 1985. A125 (paperback).

Published in the Shire Natural History series, these booklets give a lot of inform- ation for their size, and cover identification, ecology, biology, and uses and folklore where relevant. Well-produced, they pro- vide good value for money.

CONTRIBUTORS

David N. Cooke is a special grade gardener at Kew, who specializes in growing and propagating palms.

Jill Cowley is a botanist at Kew who works on the petaloid Monocotyledons, and has a special interest in the genus Roscoea.

Phillip Cribb is Curator of the Orchid Herbarium at Kew and author of The Genus Paphiopedilum, recently published in the Kew Magazine Monograph series.

John Dransfield is a botanist at Kew, specializing in palms; he is co-author of Genera Palmarum, published this year.

Ann Farrer is a free-lance botanical artist who illustrated Collins Guide to the GrasFes, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns of Britain and northern Europe.

Mark Fothergill is a free-lance botanical illustrator. He began to draw plants when, as an archaeologist, he took part in a British expedition to the Peruvian Andes.

Pat Halliday is a botanist at Kew with a special interest in the Ericaceae, particularly Rhododendron.

Christabel King is a free-lance botanical illustrator who has painted a number of plates for The Kew Magazine; she is presently preparing water- colours for a Kew Magazine Monograph entitled The Genus Lewisia.

Brian Mathew is a botanist at Kew who has written books on Iris and Crocus, as well as more general books on bulbous plants.

William T. Stearn worked for many years as a botanist in the Botany Department of the British Museum (Natural History). He is eminent in the field of Linnaean taxonomy and nomenclature, and is author of Botanical Latin.

Nigel P. Taylor is a botanist at Kew with a particular interest in woody temperate plants, and the Cactaceae.

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